


He's Just Not That Into You(r) Scent

by SaintHeretical



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alpha Kylo Ren, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - He's Just Not That Into You (2009) Fusion, Bantering, Bartender Ben, F/M, M/M, Masturbation, Omega Rey (Star Wars), Oral Sex, Penis In Vagina Sex, Romantic Comedy, Sort Of, too much Bantering, very minor Rey/other characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:34:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22537105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaintHeretical/pseuds/SaintHeretical
Summary: Rey is a young and single Omega who hasn't had a lot of luck so far finding a nice Beta guy who isn't a total flake. Theysaythey've had a great time with her, but seem to have a difficult time with calling her back.Ben is an Alpha bartender who is tired of hearing about her dating difficulties, and is ready to drop some truth bombs.An ABO He's Just Not That Into You AU
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Finn, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 169
Kudos: 1577
Collections: For one is both and both are one in love: The Reylo Fanfiction Anthology's Valentine's Day Exchange





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shipperofdarkness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shipperofdarkness/gifts).



He said he had had a great time. That’s _literally_ what he said when he dropped her off at her apartment building, after giving her a very sweet kiss on the lips. “I had a great time, Rey,” he had said, with a smile and a wave before getting back into his very practical sedan, and at that moment she had believed him.

And why wouldn’t she? It was a great date; they had gone out for tacos and dancing and margaritas, and she’d worn her tight, grey dress that showed off her ass so perfectly. And he had _seemed_ interested in her as well, by the way he danced with her and gripped her waist and brushed an errant strand of hair behind her ear.

Which is why, a full week later, it’s so confusing that she’s heard absolutely nothing from him. No call, no text, no attempt to follow her on Instagram. “It’s crazy, right?” she bemoans to her friend Rose, who is nodding emphatically over her steaming London Fog. “He was _so_ attentive! He held the door open for me, he stared at me just the right amount.”

“So he wasn’t creepy?” Rose clarifies, gesturing at her with a teaspoon.

“No, _no_ , not creepy at all. I mean, he looked at me a lot throughout the night, and I could tell he liked what he was seeing, but I didn’t feel uncomfortable at all. He was...sweet about it. About everything.”

“He’s probably just busy then. I mean, look at you! You’re like…the whole package.”

Rey is very much _not_ the whole package, as far as she’s concerned. She’s thin, yes, but not in that waifish, demure way like most other woman of her designation. Her arms are muscled from years of hard work, and her shoulders are broad, but she honestly didn’t think that would matter to someone like him.

After all, that’s why she dates Betas in the first place. Betas have no expectations, no preconceived notions about how she’ll look or act or _smell_. As a female Omega, she already has to deal with a lot of shit from Alphas she encounters while out and about, and she’ll be damned if she brings that baggage into a potential relationship. Dopheld Mitaka had been as Beta as they come, a mid-level investment banker who liked his job the appropriate amount, owned his own condo, and seemed to have a decent relationship with his parents. 

“He said he’d call me,” Rey insists.

“He _will_ call you.” Rose reaches across the table and squeezes her hand reassuringly.

“You’re right, he’s probably busy. He’s a super hard worker...he probably just needs some time to finish up for the week.” Suddenly, her face lights up with realization. “He told me that he and his colleagues usually go to The Graze on 27th Street to unwind after work. Maybe I can drop by there this evening, and ‘casually’ run into him?”

“That would be great!”

It _would_ be great. It’s thoughtful, indicating she was paying attention to him when he mentioned details of his life, plus she can act all casual like ‘yeah, I was just meeting some friends here, and I remember you said this place was great. What a coincidence, right?’ At least, that’s what she tells herself on her way home after work, afternoon tea in one hand and phone in the other.

“ _So he said he’d call you?_ ” Her friend Finn’s voice is slightly muddled through the traffic noises around her. “ _And he hasn’t yet?”_

“Yeah, that’s pretty much it. But I know the date went well; I assume he’s just busy.”

She can practically hear Finn nodding on the other end of the line. “ _Sounds about right. Same thing happened to my friend Kay. She went out with this Beta chick and ended up getting ghosted. Turns out, her date’s phone was run over by an Uber and she lost Kay’s number! They met up at an art opening over three months later and have been together ever since.”_

A flush of warmth breaks over Rey’s chest and she beams with satisfaction. “Oh, of course! Things like that happen.”

“ _Right. And Kay was devastated for weeks afterwards, but it turns out her date had been searching for her the entire time. They’re practically mated this point, or as mated as two Betas can be.”_

Rey bites her lip. Mating is a bit of a sore spot for Finn, who has been with his boyfriend Poe for over two years and is still not mated. To be fair, she completely understands Poe’s reservations; as a fellow Omega, she’s also wary of the biological ties of mating, no matter how amazing an Alpha Finn is. Still, she notices the way Finn’s eye wanders to Poe’s mating gland every time the three of them are out jogging, and she can’t imagine it’s easy for him to temper the urge to claim, claim, _claim._

“Well, thanks for the pep talk,” she responds. “I think I can see The Graze across the street.”

_“Good luck! Remember, he’s lucky to have you. Love you to bits.”_

“Love you too,” she mumbles, pocketing her phone. She downs her tea and tosses her empty thermos and phone into her purse, then crosses the street and walks into the bar. It’s pleasant enough, though a bit hipster for her taste if she’s being honest. Choosing a seat halfway down the bar, she orders a drink as she fixes her makeup using a little hand mirror, then settles herself on her stool and waits.

Her drink shows up a moment later. It’s a pretty great gin and tonic, especially considering it’s made up of only two components (plus garnish), or maybe it’s just her nerves that keep her sipping the drink like it’s the only thing keeping her upright. Before she knows it, the drink is gone and she’s left tapping her fingers on the batop, one eye trained on the door.

“Are they late?”

A warm, slightly raspy voice jolts her from her stare. “Sorry?”

The bartender, an Alpha by the looks of him (though she can’t quite make out his scent) lumbers towards her. He flips his towel over his shoulder like she’s seen in a million movies before and gives her a sympathetic half-smile. “Whoever you’re waiting for. Are they running late?”

“Oh.” Throat suddenly dry, she reaches for her glass and, finding it empty, chooses to cough into her elbow to clear her phlegm. “Ah, yes. I guess. He didn’t really specify a time.”

The bartender raises an eyebrow. “He told you to meet him here...whenever?”

She squirms in her seat, then instantly hates herself for it. “He didn’t exactly tell me to meet him here. I’m just waiting here...to see him.”

Putting two and two together rather quickly, the bartender narrows his eyes and takes a step forward. _Definitely an Alpha._ “So...you’re stalking him?”

“I’m not stalking him!” she sputters. “I _know_ him. We dated.”

“Is he your ex?”

“It’s none of your damn business who he is.”

He lets out a huff of breath. “If you’re stalking your ex in my bar, then it becomes my business.”

“Listen.” Rey sits up straight, squares her shoulders, and tries to summon as much ‘ _dealing with an asshole Alpha’_ sass into her voice as she can. “We went on a date and he’s been too busy to call me back, so I came here, to his regular bar, so I could run into him and catch up. It’s as simple as that.”

“Ah.”

She hates that tone, that little self satisfied exclamation of smugness. It’s like his entire stupid face has transformed into a punching bag with her name on it. Biting her tongue, she crosses her arms and glares at his glittering brown eyes until he cracks.

“You know he’s not going to call you, right?”

“Ex- _cuse_ you?”

The Alpha shrugs. “He’s not going to call you.”

“And how on Earth are you so sure of that?”

At this his stupid full lips curve into a self satified grin. He leans closer, and stage whispers, “Because if he was planning on calling you, he would have already done it.”

She shakes her head. “You don’t know that.”

“But I do.”

“No you don’t! You don’t know his life, or his schedule. Maybe he’s just been really busy.”

“Too busy to call up a hot girl he really likes?” The bartender rolls his eyes. “Seems plausible.”

“Maybe he’s really swamped and has deadlines on deadlines.” She thinks back to her call with Finn. “Maybe his phone got run over by an Uber and he’s desperately searching for my contact information as we speak.”

“An Uber.”

“It happened to a friend of a friend of mine.”

“No it didn’t,” he announces, definitively. “And if it did, which I totally don’t believe but whatever, then your friend’s friend is the _exception_ , not the rule.”

“I could be the exception too!” Rey all but whines back at him. 

“But you’re not though.”

“You can’t just say that! How do you know?”

“Fine.” He places his hands on the bartop, palms down, and gives her an intense stare. “If it was so magical, describe how your date went. Let me _feel_ the fireworks.”

“Fine,” she snaps back. “We went to Los Pollos Hermanos for their fried chicken tacos, pregamed with a few beers, then went to The Alternate for more drinks and dancing. He said he had a great time, and he kissed me goodnight.”

“Did he look at you?”

She wrinkles her nose. “He wasn’t visually impaired, of coursehe looked at me.”

“You know what I mean. Did he _look_ at you? And if he did, did his scent spike?”

Rey takes in a deep breath. “He didn’t have much of a scent. He’s a Beta.”

The bartender’s entire demeanor shifts, from open and casual to weirdly cold and closed off. “What the hell were _you_ doing with a Beta?”

“ _Excuse_ you?”

He gestures to her slight form perched on the barstool. “Well, you’re obviously an–”

“I don’t date Alphas,” she spits. “Never have, never will.”

“O-okay then.” He backs away, his hands held up in mock surrender. “I see you’ve made up your mind about that.”

“I have.”

“I’m just saying, if you were dating an Alpha, you wouldn’t be sitting here by yourself on a Friday night, wondering whether some guy is going to show up. No ambiguity. If an Alpha wanted you, you would _know._ ”

“No, you’re right. If I was dating an Alpha I’d probably be tied to some asshole’s bed, begging for his knot as he rubs his tongue all over my glands,” she huffs. “And is that honestly any better?”

His eye twitches. “I guess not.”

“It’s _not_. This way I’m on equal footing with prospective partners. My body’s not being controlled by my hormones or anything terrible like that. Sure...there’s more ambiguity, but I honestly think that’s better.”

“If you say so.”

She cocks her head to the side. “You’re not convinced.”

“I’m surprised you’re convincing yourself at this point.”

She snorts. “What do you mean?”

He gestures behind her. “Like I said before, you’re sitting in a half empty bar on a Friday night, on the oft chance that you’ll run into some guy you went on one date with a week ago who you _think_ might be into you but you’re not totally sure, and you’re telling yourself that this is the best way to go about finding a mate.”

“I didn’t say I was looking for a mate.” She shakes her head, then turns around to look at the rest of the bar which, surely enough, is close to deserted. “Any why _is_ it so dead tonight?”

“It’s a game night, and we don’t have any TVs.”

“Oh!” Her face breaks into a grin. “That must be it! He must be–”

The bartender lets out a long, agonized groan that tapers off into a thin grunt. It’s incongruous with his large size and intimidating features and, despite herself, Rey suppresses a laugh. “Don’t tell yourself he’s waiting until the game is over to call you. Don’t sell yourself so short.”

“Sell myself short? You’re the one who’s insisting that he doesn’t want to call me at all!” 

“Which is fine! It’s not your fault if you guys don’t hit it off. It’s like...biology.”

“Don’t give me that crap–”

“It’s not crap. It’s the truth. Beta, Omega, Alpha...chemistry is a factor with everyone, and if he’s just not into you, it’s not your fucking fault. Respect yourself, and move on.”

Move on. Honestly, ‘moving on’ has never been easy for Rey, what with her parents abandoning her in a dumpster when she was six and her foster father threatening to sell her on the black market. When she finds a glimmer of hope, she latches on, and right now the dour, milk-faced Dopheld Mitaka is the closest thing to hope that she’s seen in a while. “Sometimes–” she starts, then quickly chokes down the lump that’s growing in her throat. “–sometimes moving on is harder for some than it is for others.” She laughs, a bit wetly. “ _Jesus_ , why the hell am I even saying this?”

He gestures to the cloth hanging over his shoulder. “Bartender, remember?”

“Right.” She laughs again, this one full and warm and unencumbered. “I’m Rey, by the way.”

She sticks out her hand and he shakes it, once, just firm enough to not be weird. “Hi Rey. I’m Ben. It’s been nice getting to know you.”

“Nice?”

“I’ve served approximately seven drinks tonight, and four of them have been pitchers of cheap beer. You’re far more entertaining than polishing this bartop for five hours.”

“Why thank you, I’m flattered.” 

“There you go again. Selling yourself short.” Ben cocks his head to the side and appraises her. “Here’s the thing; if a guy really likes you, he’ll let you know it. If he doesn’t let you know, then he doesn’t like you.”

She winces. “See, I don’t think that’s the case.”

“Fine then. Give it another week. Give it two more for all I care, and if this mystery Beta you’re talking about asks you out again, come back here and I’ll make you guys free drinks for the night.”

“And if I lose this bet?”

At this, he gives her a soft smile. “Then come back here and I’ll make free drinks all night, just for you.”

* * *

Mitaka doesn’t call. Shocker.

She hears about him a couple weeks later, from a friend of a friend of a friend of Poe. Apparently he met another Beta a few days after his date with Rey, and they hit it off, enough so that he didn’t think to call her back. Or something like that; Rey chooses not to dwell on it and updates her Tinder profile instead, and a week later she’s on a date with another Beta, Berkley Thanisson, who admittedly looked a lot older in his pictures than he does in person. _Not_ that it really bothers her. Gender, age, and designation conformation is a thing of the past, and his personality more than makes up for the fact that she kind of feels like she’s on a date with a twelve year old. 

At the end of the night he tells her he had a _great_ time and kisses her, this time on the cheek. This time as she watches him drive away from her apartment window, she gets the sneaking suspicion that Ben the Bartender was right. He seemed interested enough, but there wasn’t a spark of attraction, or anything she would consider to be some sort of chemistry.

A week passes, and her suspicions are confirmed.

“No call?”

Rey pretends to examine a display full of particularly robust cabbages, pointedly ignoring Finn’s exasperated exclamation. Her friend isn’t dissuaded, muttering under his breath as he wheels his shopping cart down the aisle to catch up with her. 

“Okay, what is wrong with these guys?” he wonders. “Can no one in this city make a simple phone call in a timely manner?”

“Finn,” she sighs. “I’m tired of analyzing it. Maybe he just...ran out of minutes for this month.”

“Ran out of minutes? What year is it, 1997?” 

“Not everyone’s phone can be run over by an Uber.” She moves over to the fruit. “Hey, have you noticed that they keep coming out with new varieties of apple? I swear to god, five years ago I hadn’t even heard of a ‘Royal Gala’ or an ‘Ambrosia’. Isn’t that–”

“Rey, what are you saying?” He shakes his head. “And not about the apples, I mean about this guy and his phone. What do you mean?”

“I don’t know.” Distracted, she pokes at an under ripe avocado. “Maybe he just didn’t like me at all.”

Finn snorts. “Sure. Whatever you say.”

She doesn’t respond, instead choosing to wheel her cart over to the dairy section, her face flat and impassive. He trails behind her, suddenly concerned. “Hey, are you doing okay?”

“Huh? Yeah, I’m doing fine, I think. Why?”

“It’s just...it’s not like you to just assume that someone doesn’t like you.”

Sighing, Rey hefts a gallon of 2% milk into her cart, then turns to examine the yogurt. “Don’t overthink it. It’s not that I’m getting down on myself I’m just...I don’t know. Trying to be a bit more realistic.”

“How it is being realistic to say that any hot blooded, woman loving man wouldn’t be into you?”

“You’re hardly an expert on what women loving men are into.”

“You’d be surprised!” The wheels of his cart squeak with protest as he jogs up next to her so he can rest a gentle hand on her arm. “Hey. Where’s my Rey of sunshine? Where’s the girl who always looks for the bright side of things.”

“She’s still here.” She gives him a small smile. “I just– I was talking to this guy, and he–”

“Wait, you went out with another guy?”

“No, no, I didn’t go out with him. He was the bartender that night I tried to meet up with that Mitaka guy. The night was slow and we ended up chatting and...I don’t know. He gave me a new perspective on some things.”

“Sounds like an asshole to me.”

“He was kind of an asshole. An _Alpha_ asshole, to be more accurate.”

“Ohohoho! Well, don’t see me apologizing on his behalf.” Finn grabs a tub of non-dairy butter-esque spread and puts it in his cart. “By the way, what did this Alpha smell like?”

It’s kind of a rude subject to bring up, but the two of them are close enough that they discuss people’s scents all the time, mostly out of curiousity. “Weirdly enough, I couldn’t scent him at all. Oh, are you guys going vegan again?”

“Just dairy free for now. Poe’s been having this weird skin thing. That’s strange...nothing at all? Was the bar really busy or something?”

“It was practically dead. This guy just doesn’t have a smell, but he’s definitely an Alpha. Probably on some crazy blockers or something.”

Finn hums to himself. “Or something. Could be you guys just aren’t compatible. That probably made things awkward between the two of you as well, since he could probably scent you, and you got nothing back.”

She picks up a tub of greek yogurt and gingerly places it on top of the rest of her groceries. “I was fine with it. I _like_ it when I can’t smell someone’s sweaty erection from twenty feet away. No offense.”

“None taken. Hey, which of these non-dairy cheeses do you think tastes the least like ass?”

They pay for their groceries at the checkout. As the clerk loads the food into their reusable fabric shopping bags, Rey ponders the mysterious, blunt bartender and his words of pseudo wisdom. What if he’s right? What if every single date she’s been on has failed because the other person simply didn’t like her? What if it had nothing to do with her outfit or her laugh, or whether she had something stuck in her teeth? What if they just weren’t compatible?

Finn drops her off at her apartment, where she unpacks her groceries in five minutes flat and is out the door in less than two more. She grabs an Uber back downtown, fuming the entire way.

How _dare_ he? How dare that stupid asshole Alpha (Ben, her brain helpfully reminds her) assume that she’s turned off her entire dating history? How dare he claim to know her better than she knows herself? And most of all, how dare he dangle the promise of free drinks in front of her nose?

The Graze is even deader than before, thanks to it being 6:30 PM on a Wednesday night. Ben looks up at her when she walks through the door and grins. “You’re back.”

Rey intentionally doesn’t meet his gaze as she slumps down on the stool and tosses her purse onto the bartop. “Fuck you.”

He laughs. “That good, hey?”

“I don’t know. I was _trying_ to be upfront this time with the second guy, to let him know that I was on to him, you know? That I wasn’t there for the bullshit.”

An ice filled, squat glass slides over to her, its contents sloshing but not spilling, She grabs it and takes a drink. “Ooo, what’s this?”

“A gimlet. Thought you might like something a little different.”

“It’s wonderful, thanks.” She takes another sip and continues. “And sure, he wasn’t really my type, but I thought he was having a good time, you know?”

Ben tilts his head to the side. “Would you call him back?”

“What?”

He snorts and sidles up next to her, his muscled forearms crossing on the bartop. “If you were the guy in this situation, or if you were so completely past gender norms that it didn’t matter who called who....would you call him back?”

She runs her finger down the condensation on the side of her drink, leaving a trail of clear glass behind it. “No. I guess not.”

“Then why does it matter that he didn’t call you? Because they’re your feelings on the line?”

“Of course!”

“You see, this is what I don’t understand about you.” He runs his fingers over to her drink, plucks the lime slice off of the edge, then cleanly bites off the fruit before she can protest. Tossing the rind in the trash, he continues,“You say you don’t date Alphas because you don’t like the power imbalance, but then you turn around and date Betas and give them all this power over you. Why does it fucking matter whether a guy calls you back or not? Don’t let it matter to you. If he’s not into you, write him off and move. On.”

“You said that last time, and again it’s not that _easy_!” She wants to bare her teeth at him and hiss. The primal part of her is screaming to put him in his place, to show him how unworthy he is of her attention, but such animalistic displays aren’t accepted in polite company, so she settles for a solid, unwavering glare.

Surprisingly, he backs off. “If you say so,” he murmurs, voice suddenly soft. “You would know better than I.”

“I would.” Fuck, another sob is building in her throat, so she tries to chase it away with a deep swig of her gimlet and only succeeds in making herself choke. “Some of us have had to move past a lot over the years. It’s...tiring.”

“Tell me about it.” She gives him another glare, which he returns with a soft smile. “No, seriously. Tell me about it.” He gestures to the mostly deserted bar. “You always seem to pick the best times to come here and have a chat.”

So she does. She tells him about her loneliness, about how she used to dumpster dive behind the Olive Garden for food, about living in fear that her foster father would sell her. Her throat seizes up when she mentions Maz Katana, the social worker who helped her emancipate herself, whose subsequent untimely death left a hole in Rey’s heart that still hasn’t healed. She lights up when she mentions meeting Finn, and Poe, and Rose, and all of her other friends who have been so, _so_ supportive of her and all of her endeavours and finally, with a sigh, describes the string of bad dates that led to her downloading Tinder and going out with Mitaka.

“So hold on a second.” Ben puts the finishing touch on a colourful, fruity looking drink, spearing a ruby red cherry with a plastic sword before sliding it down the counter towards her. “You said your friends have been together for two years, and they still haven’t mated?”

Rey takes a sip of the drink. It’s nice, sweet and light and pineapple-y. “What’s this?”

“It’s a Shirley Temple. You need to stay hydrated. Anyway, don’t change the subject.”

She rolls her eyes. “I can’t expect you to understand it, but Finn and Poe’s relationship is different than the normal Alpha-Omega thing. Finn respects that Poe doesn’t want to be mated.”

“But why? Is he scared of commitment?”

“No! He’s not scared of anything; they love each other so much. He’s just...he doesn’t like the power dynamics of the mating bond, how _permanent_ it is.”

It’s Ben’s turn to roll his eyes. “So he’s scared of commitment.”

“That’s not what I’m saying at all! It’s different for an Omega.”

“Except it’s not at all. If anything it’s harder for the Alpha, since the mating bond initiates a reciprocal connection where the mates can influence each other’s thoughts and emotions. What’s _really_ going on with your friends is that, in the back of his mind, the Omega is still shopping around for a better prospective mate.”

“No he’s not! You don’t even know them.” She frowns and takes another sip of her drink, which is _delicious_ , fuck him very much.

“I may not know him, but I know the way Alphas work. Your Omega friend has his Alpha by the balls under the guise of ‘not wanting a power imbalance’ in their relationship. The Alpha can’t assert his obvious desire for mating without seeming like an asshole, while the Omega is free to have all of the perks of a mated relationship without the commitment.” He gestures with his checkered dish towel for emphasis. “Don’t you see? This whole power struggle within relationships thing is so much more nuanced than you want to believe.”

“Excuse you?” She bites the cherry off of its little plastic sword and chews it angrily. “Why is this all of a sudden circling back to me?”

“Because you’ve surrounded yourself with people that encourage this learned helplessness you have. You’re all claiming to be independant or whatever, yet your friend is pining after his own boyfriend like a neutered puppy while you’re sitting around moping about guys who don’t even deserve you in the first place. Seriously: go out there, and find someone who treats you right. Be ruthless. If a guy likes you, he’ll let you know. _Believe me._ ”

He punctures his statement by poking his index finger on the counter, then quickly turns away to help a customer, leaving Rey alone to ponder his words. She sighs, her eyes surveying the eclectic collection of bottles lined up on glass shelves behind the bar. Each bottle is a slightly different colour, shades of blue and green and amber glinting in the low ambient light. Different...just like each guy she’s dated, and yet all of them have apparently been entirely wrong for her.

“Sorry about that.” Ben slides back down the bar. “Customers. The nerve.”

“Right, yeah. Totally.” She takes another sip of her drink. “So what you were saying before...about a guy letting me know if he likes me. How would I– god, this is embarrassing.”

“How can you tell?” He lets out a small chuckle. “Don’t be embarrassed. I think there’s so much bullshit we’re fed about what we’re supposed to do when dating or how to decipher your date’s body language to find out whether they like you, y’know shit like that. We’ve forgotten how natural dating can be.”

“So what _does_ a guy do then? When he likes someone?”

“Depends on the guy.”

Rey lets out a long, low groan. “Be-enn. Stop bullshitting me.”

“Fine. If I liked someone, I’d do my best to make them feel special. I’d pay them compliments, try and build them up. Find excuses to talk to them and hang out with them. You know, kind shit like that.”

“What about the Alpha stuff?” she counters. “How does an Alpha show they like someone?”

“They like _someone?_ Or an Omega?” She gives him a look, and he laughs. “Okay, fine. Honestly it’s pretty much the same. When an Alpha courts an Omega, they’ll try to be extra attentive. Protective. Learn their likes and dislikes. Give them expensive or meaningful gifts. Body wise, their scent changes when they’re around a prospective mate.”

“How so?”

He shrugs. “I couldn’t say really. It’s different for everyone.”

“Then how does it happen with you?”

“You tell me.”

There. That moment. Where he just _looks_ at her with his deep brown eyes, mouth soft and slightly pleading. In that moment, her heart skips a beat because it’s so perfect, the way he banters with her and humours her, and he’s so _fucking_ handsome with his sleeves rolled up. She can finally admit it to herself; she’s attracted to him, despite his designation, and at this moment, she really, really hates her own ‘I only date Betas’ rule, especially when he looks at her like this–

Then his mouth twists into a moronic, almost diabolical grin, and he laughs. “Just kidding.” 

She lets out a small chuckle that’s more of a cough. “Right.”

“I honestly can’t say how my scent changes, specifically. I...don’t get out much, if you hadn’t guessed. I’m a bit of a workaholic.”

“No kidding.” She glances around the bar. It’s sparsely populated with a few elderly men sitting at a sticky vinyl booth sharing a pitcher, two people on what appears to be a semi-successful date, and a lone man nursing a beer at the other end of the bar. “Does anyone else even work here?”

“Uh, yeah. My uncle runs the kitchen some nights, and my sort of uncle runs it when he can’t make it. My dad used to tend bar here before–” Ben ducks his head. “He passed away a couple months ago. Cancer.”

“Oh no. Ben, I’m so sorry.” She reaches her hand out and grasps his. It’s large and warm under her palm. “Fuck. That’s terrible.”

“It is. But I take solace in the fact that he would be happy I’m here now, instead of back at my old job.” His eyes linger on their intertwined hands. “It was an investment firm. Soul sucking work. He left me the bar in his will half out of spite, half in a last ditch effort to save me from myself.”

It’s been a minute, but she makes no move to pull her hand away. “Seems like it worked.”

* * *

She doesn’t know what comes over her that night. Full of gin and pineapple juice and feeling weirdly vulnerable, she strips off her clothes and slips into her bed naked, her hands crawling all over her skin like wildfire. She’s horny, obviously, but not in the way that a vibrator and some cringy porn will fix. No this is something much more visceral than that. 

Taking in a deep breath, she digs through her bedside drawer until she finds _it_ : her knotting dildo. The one she uses only during her heats, and only if she’s exhausted any other measure. It’s not that it feels bad, per say, it’s more that it seems like a gateway to wanting something more, something that Rey’s definitely not looking for right now, if ever. 

The heft of it in her hands makes her mouth water and her glands throb. She’s still at least a month away from her heat, so it must have been all that talk about scents and courting and mating that’s setting her off right now. Closing her eyes, she brings the toy between her legs and just sets it down there, for the moment. Experience tells her she has to ease herself into it, so she starts off with her fingers instead, teasing and trailing as she lets her mind wander.

God, if she wasn’t so fucking paranoid, she probably could bring herself to share a heat with an Alpha. He would have to be a _gem_ of an Alpha though, with none of that posturing machismo, growing ‘ _omega’_ and swinging his dick around every chance he got. No, this Alpha would be like the ones Ben described; attentive, thoughtful, laiden with gifts like a sexy Santa Claus. 

She hisses as she trails a finger over her clit, moist and feather-soft, like a teasing prod of a talented tongue. This Alpha would definitely have to like eating pussy. He would have to be a damn master at eating pussy. In her ideal world, she would require him to make her come at least three times before his dick could go anywhere near her. She imagines the drag of a tongue, the brush of plush lips, the nudge of a prominent nose and _fuck_ , she’s so much wetter than normal, her finger sliding into her core without any resistance. 

He would _love_ it too, eating her out like a starving man, his hands gripping her thighs, forcing her down against the bed even as she’s writhing beneath him. He would make those nice little moans too, so low and sweet that reverberate through her folds. His hair...it would be long enough to grab, so she could lace her fingers through it and tug, just a bit, when she’s getting close. Dark locks, woven through her fingers as she’s panting above him, desperately begging as he looks up at her with his deep brown eyes–

_Fuck._

She comes in a rush, slick pooling between her thighs and dripping onto her sheets. Gasping for air, she looks down at the mess she’s made, and her eyes focus on the thick, knotted dildo just an inch away from her entrance, already glistening with fluid. 

_Double fuck_. 

Sure, it’s dangerous for her resolve, but there’s still something itching beneath the surface of her skin, something that she can’t scratch with her fingers alone. Gritting her teeth, she grabs the toy and slowly, slowly eases it inside her, all while frantically banishing any images of a particular Alpha from her mind. 

She’s unsuccessful, but she swears she’s never come harder.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all of your feedback! Chapter 3 should be up on Tuesday!

After her... _little blip_ as she’s taken to calling it, Rey launches herself back into the dating pool with new resolve. No more feeling sorry for herself, no more sitting around waiting for guys to call, and no more dating losers who don’t deserve her. She wants chemistry, damnit, chemistry and fireworks and thoughtful gifts and all that other crap. 

Snap Wexley is a friend of Poe’s from university, and initially doesn’t really seem like her type. Not that she has something against chunkier guys, but she’s never really found herself attracted to men that are a bit thicker, plus he’s quite a bit older than her as well. Still, she decides to give him a chance based on Poe’s glowing recommendation, so they head off to a lovely Italian restaurant for a seemingly innocuous dinner date. 

Joke’s on her. As it turns out, Snap is not only an excellent conversationalist, courteous, and well versed in excellent table manners, but he’s also an extremely fascinating person. Over bruschetta and wine, he regales her with insane stories from his career as a pilot, explains the intricacies of his life as an army brat, and gives her the small gift of a lovely pewter keychain shaped like a vintage ‘77 Falcon.

“Poe told me you were a mechanic,” he explains as she examines the small model with wonder. “He didn’t know what your favourite car was but he said you liked ‘em old, and I figured there’s nothing more classic than a Falcon.”

_I guess I_ do _like them old_ , Rey muses, eyeing the flecks of grey hair at Snap’s temples. 

He’s attentive too, listening with rapt attention as she explains the intricacies of a Bugatti V-12 engine. It helps that he understands a bit about what she’s talking about since, being a pilot, he has a pretty extensive mind for mechanics. To top it all off, he’s a Beta as well, and doesn’t comment at all about her designation, scent, or the fact that her glands are still a bit swollen and puffy. It makes her feel like a real person, not a novelty or a sex object and by the end of the night she’s feeling pretty great about the whole thing. 

Like the gentleman he is, he walks her to her door, smiling the entire way. “I had a great time tonight,” he says, like every man before him, but this time Rey believes him.

That it, until she leans into him, soft smile on her face, lips slightly pursed, and he _flinches_.

“I, uh–” He winces. “Sorry, I’ve got super bad garlic breath. You know, the pasta and bread and stuff.”

Then he extends his hand for her to shake, and Rey wants to die, right there on the spot.

One awkward handshake later, she’s in her apartment, tossing her heels off and swigging from a gross old bottle of Fireball. The cinnamon whiskey burn down her throat helps her focus, helps her take her mind off of her obviously delusional state the entire night, thinking this guy actually liked _her_ of all things. She thinks she calls an Uber. Or some other rideshare service, hell even a cab, because one moment she’s licking drops of spilled Fireball from her counter, and the next she’s stumbling into The Graze with her pulse pounding in her ears. 

It seems busier than normal, or maybe it’s just the way everything is blurring in front of her. Blindly, she makes her way to her normal stool at the bar, slumps over, and lays her face down on the smooth wood. She feels the heavy thump of Ben’s approaching footsteps through her cheek.

“Ben. Why does no one ever want me?”

There’s a moment of silence, and then: “That’s not true.”

She wants to scream at him, because he has no fucking idea what it’s like. _Everyone_ wants to be with an Alpha. Hell, she doesn’t even date Alphas and, deep down, she still wants one. 

There’s a sliding rattle, and then something cold brushes up against her forehead.

“Drink this.”

With a groan of protest, she heaves herself up and looks down at what appears to be a glass of plain water, with a squeezed lime wedge bobbing like a buoy on the surface. She wrinkles her nose. “No.”

His nostrils flare. “Drink this, or I’m kicking you out.”

Everything is a bit of a blur after that, as the thick fog of dinner wine and depression whiskey hits her light a freight train. It’s like she’s watching herself through the hole of a drinking straw, all weird and hyper focused and missing entirely too much. She drinks Ben’s water. She _must,_ because when she wakes up God knows how much later, her mouth doesn’t feel as rubbery and ass-like as she was expecting, and the pounding in her head is almost tolerable.

It doesn’t help that she’s wedged into what appears to be a sticky vinyl booth that smells like stale beer and armpits. _Fuck_. Her gag reflex triggers, and she reaches out a panicked hand for something, anything, groaning with relief when her fingers brush up against a lukewarm glass of water. She downs it, squinting. 

She’s still at The Graze, but the lights are out, save for one peeking out through a crack in the door behind the bar. She shifts, and a hint of something warm, sweet, and fucking _delicious_ shoots up her nose. It must be from the faded flannel shirt she’s currently wearing like a Snuggie, one side trapped under her armpit while the other half is lodged between her body and the seat. 

It must be Ben’s. Hesitantly, she brings the fabric up to her nose and gives it a tiny sniff, and the heady scent of hot chocolate, marshmallows, warm blankets, and home fills her nostrils so intensely she almost faints. He smells like everything she’s ever wanted, like security and pleasure and coziness and comfort and she really needs to pull this shirt off and throw it across the room because she can feel her muscles start to go pliant and her mind starts wandering to things like knots and slick and a warm, soft nest of blankets.

But...it’s cold and dark, and his shirt makes her feel safe and protected so she wraps it around herself and quietly pads across the deserted bar. It’s kind of weird, being here when it’s so dark and quiet. Closed bars really are such liminal spaces late at night, where the empty booths and stools echo the revelry from hours earlier. Holding her breath, she steps behind the bar, and creeps towards the door. This close, she can just make out Ben’s voice coming from the other side, low and husky. 

“Yeah, no I think it’s under control now. Uh huh. Right, yeah I know mom. I promise I’ll be careful I– Yup...love you too.”

There’s a soft _beep_ then the door opens, revealing Ben’s concerned face. “Hey. You feeling better?”

“I think.” Her head is still throbbing and she still feels a bit intoxicated, but at least she’s sober enough that she knows she’s not fully sober. “I think I-I’m still a bit drunk. I had wine with my dinner and then some Fireball at home, and I don’t know if I ate much and–”

“Hey.” His hand feels like a heating pad on her shoulder, and her muscles melt. “It’s going to be okay. May I drop you off at your place?”

“M’okay.” 

Dutifully, she finishes off another glass of water that he hands her, but refuses his offer of a protein bar. “They always make me feel weird,” she explains, to which he responds with a “Fair enough.” 

They’re halfway to her place when she lets out a little snort. “Garlic breath.”

He frowns with confusion. “Sorry.”

“My date he...he said he didn’t want to kiss me. Because he had garlic breath.”

“Hmm.” 

She peeks over at him, quickly enough to see the glint of his grinning teeth in the moonlight, and her stomach does a wonky little flip. Resolutely, she stares ahead, willing herself to not be distracted by his big hands effortless guiding the steering wheel or the way his comforting scent is that much stronger inside his car. It’s still tamer than she would have expected, given her experiences with other Alphas she’s met, but it’s strong and appealing enough that she hasn’t offered to give back the shirt she has wrapped around her shoulders. 

He pulls to a stop in front of her apartment building. “Do you need help up?” he asks. “Like, are there a bunch of stairs or something?”

“I’m only on the second floor, so I should be able to manage.” She takes a breath and looks out the window at the dark, looming building where she lives. Alone. _Fuck_. God, another sob is already burbling up her throat like food poisoning. She cannot cry in front of this man again, not tonight. Not when she feels all mushy and vulnerable like this, no when all she craves is strong arms and soft lips at her neck, nipping and licking all the right places. 

“Ben…” She’s said his name many times before, but now it feels different on her tongue. Less like a jab or an insult, more like...a plea. “Ben, would you like to–”

“You should get to bed, Rey,” he snaps back. “You’re going to need all the sleep you can get.”

Fuck, he’s not even looking at her. His eyes are fixed straight ahead, as if he’s just as transfixed by her apartment building as she is. 

“O-okay. Okay, I’ll get to bed. Thanks for the ride.”

She’s not going to cry. She’s _not_ , at least not until she’s gone up the flight of stairs and closed her door behind her. Then, she allows herself the small mercy of melting into a puddle on her daisy printed welcome mat as tears stream down her face, Ben’s flannel shirt clutched to her chest like a lifeline.

* * *

Life goes on, in the way it did before. Rey goes to work every day, spending most of her time rolled under cars or being condescended to by Alphas, or men (usually both) who figure a female Omega like her belongs nowhere near their precious automobile. She lunches with Rose occasionally, but usually she eats alone in the break room, or wandering the streets with her sandwich in hand. 

She deletes Tinder, then redownloads it a week before her heat. It seems stupid, after all, to power through it without help when there may be someone out there who is willing to assist her to the best of their abilities, even if they are a Beta. She’s still not quite _there_ with Alphas; if anything the whole half-propositioning Ben while tipsy debacle has soured her to them even more than before. 

Speaking of Ben...she hasn’t been to The Graze since that night. It would be too awkward, after what happened, or more accurately what didn’t happen. In hindsight she’s thankful he shut her down; it speaks a lot to his character, since she was still obviously drunk when he dropped her off, but she can’t lie that it stings a little. There’s something so disconcerting about it; an Alpha she can’t smell, who wants to be _friends_ with her, and doesn’t want anything else.

“He could be gay,” Finn muses when she explains the sitation to him. She’s over at his and Poe’s for pre-clubbing snacks before they meet up with Rose at Basic Urges, the new place downtown. 

She shrugs and dips a ridged crisp into a bowl of sour cream and onion dip. “Could have been, but I don’t think so. I think he would have mentioned it.”

Poe raises an eyebrow. “During one of your three conversations?”

“Hey, I’ll have you know that they were very long conversations,” she counters. “Spanning several hours each. And he was open about a lot of stuff. I guess, using his words....he just wasn’t into me.”

“Why does it matter though?” Finn wonders. “You don’t date Alphas.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s just been bugging me, for some dumb reason.”

“Maybe he’s not into Omegas,” Poe offers, and she snorts.

“That’s not it. He was practically personally offended when I said I don’t date Alphas. He said it was unnatural or some shit like that.”

“Oh hohohoho!” He reaches for the chip bag and grabs a handful. “Sounds like a piece of work then.”

“He totally was!” Rey tears into the assumption with relish. “Gave me a hard time about not dating Alphas, and when I told him you guys weren’t mated, he said something stupid about how Poe must have commitment issues.”

_That_ sucks the air out of the room quite quickly. She pauses, snack halfway to her mouth, and watches as her friends exchange tense glances. “I mean, the guy was obviously crazy...right?”

“Right.” Finn stares down at his feet. “We should get going, hey? Rose said she’d meet us at eight?”

The ride to the club is _very_ terse, to say the least. Rey keeps her gaze fixated outside at the passing buildings, the traffic and people milling about on the sidewalks. She didn’t mean to pry, didn’t mean to cause tension or cross any sort of line. Finn and Poe are happy; she expected them to laugh or agree that Ben the Bartender was crazy to think that there was anything wrong with their perfect relationship.

And yeah, it’s always been a sore spot for Finn. But that was Finn’s point of issue, and she hadn’t commented on it at all, and now the way they two men are shooting furtive glances at each other, she’s not sure things are going as well between them as she originally assumed. 

Sanctuary comes in the form of Basic Urges, one of those clubs that’s new and clean but styled in a way that comes across as grungy and dark, like the place hasn’t been cleaned since 1996. She spots Rose easily in the crowd, despite the other woman’s short stature, due to her propensity to wear extremely bright, neon dresses. Today’s offering is highlighter yellow, which glows eerily in the club’s blacklight.

“Where are the lovebirds?” Rose yells over the pulsating bass of the music.

“I’m not sure.” Rey frowns. “Rose, I think I fucked up.”

She explains over a couple of too-watery cocktails and half a bowl of bar peanuts. Rose nods encouragingly every few minutes, snatching a peanut here or there when the story lulls. 

“I’m not sure I get it,” she says, once Rey is finished. “Why does it matter what some asshole bartender thinks? It’s their relationship, and they get to define the parameters of it.”

“But I think they’re not happy with it? At least, I know Finn isn’t, and I’m guessing they’ve already had a conversation along the lines of what Ben was saying. Bringing it up seemed to reopen some old wounds.”

“Well, they’re adults Rey. If it’s an issue, they’re eventually going to have to resolve it if they want their relationship to work.” 

“I–” A voice that sounds disturbingly like Ben’s echoes through her mind. _She has a point, you know. There’s no use pretending their relationship isn’t broken...if it is._ “I just hate seeing people upset.”

“Then don’t!” Rose pushes aside their empty drinks and tugs Rey’s arm. “Come dance with me instead.”

The DJ is playing an intoxicating house beat when they both stumble onto the dancefloor, hands in the air and bodies swaying. Rey loves dancing; has loved it ever since the first time she went out. She loves the music, and the feeling of being so surrounded by nameless and faceless bodies all moving to a titanic beat they can feel in their muscles. Rose is in front of her, her shiny black hair glowing under the colourful lights, and Rey feels weightless, floating on the beat as she surrenders her body to the music. 

That is, until she smells the yeasty musk of man and beer, and feels the thick warmth of a body close behind her. She whirls around, about to tell the stranger to back off a bit, when her protests die in her throat. “B-Ben?”

He looks _different_ , taller, she supposes, and less casual than his normal t-shirts and jeans portray him. Tonight he’s in black slacks and a tight red dress shirt that’s straining at the buttons, and it might be the light, but he looks just loose enough that he’s probably had a few drinks already tonight. 

“Hey Rey.” His voice is deeper and more gravelly than it is when he’s working.

“Hey.” 

They just stand there for a couple of seconds, two people so lost in the sight of each other that they become impervious to the movement around them. “I haven’t seen you at the bar,” he finally comments. “Wondered whether that meant you found someone special.”

“Nope,” she replies, popping the ‘p’ with a raise of her eyebrow. “Just...just felt a bit silly, that’s all. After what happened.”

“Right. Except nothing happened.”

“I know.” She looks down at her hands, suddenly infatuated with the glittery nailpolish Rose applied there. “I know, and I feel so weird about it.”

His face softens. “Weird? How so?”

“I don’t know, I just–” She lets out a huff of air. “It felt like being rejected again, except to my face this time...and it felt way worse.”

“So you actually did–?” His mouth falls open into a little ‘o’ shape. “I thought...I assumed because you were drunk–”

“I’m still lonely Ben! I’m _so_ fucking lonely, and you’re so nice and your shirt smelled so good and I–”

Then he reaches out with gentle, tentative fingers, just brushing against the skin of her wrist. “Wanna dance?” he grunts, and she doesn’t exactly know why she says yes, especially after he summarily rejected her a few weeks back. Maybe it’s because she wants to feel how big his hands are against her hips. Maybe it’s because she wants to feel the press of his chest against her back, or maybe it’s because she’s three days away from her heat and even though she can barely smell his hot chocolate and roasted marshmallow scent, she _craves_ him.

“Yeah sure,” she shrugs. It feels casual enough, like something a regular, cool girl would say to any random guy who asked her, but when her hand slips into his, her entire world spins. He’s _big_. So big, and warm, and firm, and entirely different from any other guy she’s touched before. She chalks it up to him being an Alpha and, for a second, she mentally chastises herself for shutting off this avenue of her dating life, but then he pulls her up against him on the dance floor and her heart pounds.

This is it. This is the chemistry, the fireworks, the magnetic pull of attraction that makes her undeniably sure that this man, this Alpha, is into her. His fingers dig into her hips as the music changes to something smooth and sensual, her body slowing to a liquid roll as she writhes against him. 

“Hey.” His voice is a dark rasp in her ear. “I have to admit...I’m not much of a dancer.”

“Hm?” she mumbles back, barely audible over the pulse of the music. “But here you are.”

“Here I am.”

She can feel his awkwardness behind her as he moves his too large feet into some semblance of a shuffle. Luckily for him, what they’re doing isn’t really dancing, it’s more like dry humping with clothes on as she grinds her ass up against him in time with the beat. Due to his height, she’s kind of rubbing up against his thighs instead of her intended target, but the heat and the pulsating music mixed with the swirl of their scents around her is enough to make her reach back and lace one of her hands in his to pull him even closer. 

“ _Alpha,”_ she breathes. “Alpha, touch me.”

Her mind is lost as she drags his hand up to her chest, to where her slinky green dress is just covering her breasts. A fingertip drags against her nipple, making it pebble instantly under the fabric, and the effect is _instantaneous_. Suddenly, his hands are everywhere on her body, running over her shoulders, circling her waist, pulling her hips even closer to his so she can feel where he’s hot and hard against the small of her back. A deep, cramping pulse of want flows through her, sending her scent thick into the air and staining her thin panties with slick, and she can tell he notices by the way his big right hand grips her waist as his left skims lower to the hem of her dress. 

“I can fucking _smell_ you,” he slurs into her ear. “You’re dripping for me, Omega.”

“‘Yes, _yes_ ,” she hisses against her teeth, as his fingertip toys with the fabric edge. “Touch me please, Alpha, just take me and make me yours.”

His hand moves away from her hem and latches onto hers and then he’s pulling her away from the dance floor, tugging her in the direction of the back exit next to the bar. The cold evening air is a shock to her system that’s quickly quenched when he presses her up against the exterior brick wall and leans down to kiss her. It’s _magical_ , soft and hot and wet and Rey can finally taste his arousal on her tongue, smokey and sticky sweet with want.

He wants her. Somebody wants her. 

She hoists herself up onto her tiptoes so she can thread her fingers through his thick black hair. Groaning into her mouth, he deepens the kiss, tightening his hold on her so he can grind himself firmly into her belly.

“So,” she mumbles against his lips. “I’m guessing you’re into me?”

He lets out a soft _‘fuck’_ and laughs.“Sometimes a guy–” He pauses, panting softly against her ear. “–sometimes a guy will put up with a girl bitching about all the losers she’s dating, just so he can spend time with her. Sometimes he’ll delude himself into thinking he has a chance with her, even when she told him she doesn’t date Alphas.”

“Who said anything about dating?” She squirms up against him, desperate for more contact. She doesn’t want to trap him into something serious, not while they’re grinding against each other in the back alley behind a club. “Who said...who said that this had to be anything more than–”

“–a quick fuck?” he finishes, and she groans against him, wet and needy.

“Yes, Alpha, _please.”_

“No, no.” At this he pulls away, his eyes glimmering in the moonlight. “Rey, you can’t possibly think that that’s what I’m asking for here. I don’t _do_ casual.”

“Fucking Alphas.” The throb between her legs has worsened to a pervasive, cramping ache. She feels flustered and sweaty, despite the cool night air and the chill of the bricks at her back. “Why can’t you just...Ben, Alpha _please_. I need you. I know you want me, I can _smell_ it.”

It’s thick in the air, the heady musk of aroused Alpha swirling around her head and, for the first time in recent memory, it’s not giving her a headache or making her nauseated. No, instead she feels her pussy clench against nothing as another warm trickle of slick oozes into her panties, and she would be mortified if his fucking eyes weren’t as black as coal, looking at her like she’s good enough to _bite._

“I can’t,” he says through gritted teeth. 

“No,” she sobs. “No, please, don’t say that again, please Ben. Please. _Please_ , I need you to fuck me. I need you to take care of me Alpha. Please, please just fuck me, that’s all I’m asking.”

“I can’t because I like you too fucking much”

A heavy weight thuds into the pit of her stomach. Blinking back tears, she shakes her head, trying to clear her mind and nose of the scents seeping from their pores. 

“Well, shit,” she hisses. “I need someone. And if it’s not going to be you, then I’ll find someone else.”

It hurts, physically _aches_ to pull herself away from him, but she has to. It’s only shred of dignity she has left in front of this man who has flayed open her insecurities and delusions so thoroughly. With a final backwards glance, she shuffles back into the club, grabs her coat from a thoroughly confused Rose, and heads back outside into the night air, even as her brain is screaming at her to stop.


	3. Chapter 3

She doesn’t date Alphas.

They’ve barely been talking for ten minutes, so little that a statement like that shouldn’t feel absolutely Earth shattering, but yet here he is. Chatting up a cute Omega girl in his bar who only dates Betas, and feeling like a total idiot for doing so.

Not that he should. He talks to a ton of people; it’s practically the main part of his job, for god’s sake. And sure, it’s usually more of a situation where they talk _at_ him instead of it being a full fledged two sided conversation, and for the most part he’s not very, _very_ attracted to the person on the other side of the bar but, yet again, here he is. Chatting and half hard and minding his bar, all with a hopeful air of nonchalance as his brain proceeds to self destruct inside his skull.

She smells like...well, it’s hard to put into words. His uncle Luke did his entire doctoral thesis on personal scent interpretation and, while Ben didn’t exactly read the damn thing, he’s around his uncle enough to hear about the complex relationship between pheromone laden scents and the human brain. Enough to know that the brain tends to equate a biologically compatible scent with positive memories, things that should elicit comfort and, later on, arousal. It’s the only thing that keeps Ben from running away and chopping his own dick off the moment he scents this Omega and the first thing he thinks of is his mother.

Except it’s not really his mom he’s thinking of. As he was growing up, his mother travelled a lot for work and was barely ever home. The time she was home was spent almost entirely in the massive flower garden in the backyard of their house, which was managed for the most part by a three person yard staff. Still, in her spare time Leia Organa could be found out amongst the lilacs and roses, pruning and snipping off blossoms to put into water for the kitchen table and, as a young boy, Ben would follow after her, carrying a bucket of flowers on one arm and a spray bottle of fertilizer under the other.

Sunshine is too vague of a term to describe this Omega’s scent. Really, it’s the scent of fresh cut flowers warmed by the sun, fresh roses and freesia and lilacs and lilies, and when he smells it, all he can think of is comfort and belonging and the satisfaction of being useful. So when those four little words come out of her mouth and crush his dreams of a future with her, all he can do is back off, give her a little sass, and hope for another few minutes of her scent.

* * *

But it’s not just her scent.

It never is, really. Most people focus on scent because it’s something tangible, but really the connection between a compatible Alpha and Omega is much more than that. It’s the way she smiles shyly, like she’s scared that someone will see her, or the way that her fingers always have dark stains of grease buried under her nails. It’s the way he can see their future together in the glint of her hazel eyes.

She, of course, notices none of this because he’s on Grade-A industrial strength blockers, mandated for any Alpha who works with ‘vulnerable populations’. Apparently some lawmaker thirty or so years ago drummed up enough scare tactics about Alpha bartenders preying on young, drunk Omegas that now it’s the law for Ben to be medicated to the gills in order to keep his job. So the fact that he can smell _anything_ at this point is a fucking miracle, and he’s never smelled anyone as strongly as Rey. It’s like he’s sixteen again, thrown into his first rut at a pep rally full of teenaged cheerleaders, where his hands feel too big and his pants feel too small and all he wants to do is _take_. 

He can’t believe his luck when she comes back on a dull Wednesday evening. Sure, he assumed that the guy wouldn’t call her, but the fact that he’s taking him up on his offer of free drinks speaks to a loneliness that Ben wholeheartedly understands. 

And yeah, he teases her a little. Flirts a little, because he knows nothing will come of it. It’s nice, to be honest, to let off a bit of steam after being cooped up behind this bar for months, to bullshit with a pretty girl who will never want him back. 

It’s fine, really. She’s great to talk to, great to look at, and fucking amazing to smell, but she’s _off-limits_. She doesn’t date Alphas. And that’s perfectly fine.

Until she comes in a few weeks later smelling of bad Italian food, wine, and nasty cinnamon whiskey. It should be a crime, someone as wonderful as Rey coming in reeking of all the vestiges of a bad date but then, if possible, it gets even worse.

“Ben.” Her voice is small, too small, and breathy. “Why does no one ever want me?”

_I fucking want you_. It’s so tempting to lay it bare before her, but he _can’t_. Not when she’s like this: sad, vulnerable, and more than a little drunk. It’s not fair to him, and it’s definitely not fair to her, when she’s explicitly told him she’s not interested in people of his designation. It’s not his place to manipulate her and take advantage of her when she’s down.

No. He’s her friend, first and foremost.

“That’s not true,” he grunts. He fills up a Collins glass full of water and a squeeze of lime, and slides it down towards her. “Drink this.”

“No.”

“Drink this or else I’m kicking you out.”

She sticks her tongue out and it’s adorable. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“What, you think I couldn’t take you?”

“I know you couldn’t take me. You’re too…” She chokes back a sob. “You’re too nice. God, why do you have to be so fucking nice?”

“Shut up. I’m not nice. What kind of an Alpha is nice?”

“You just don’t wanna let people know you’re a big softie.” With a slight waver, she spins around on her stool and announces, “Hey everyone! Ben the bartender is suuuuper nice!”

The rest of the customers stare back at her. One particularly enthusiastic guy gives a half hearted ‘ _yeah!’_ from a back booth, and Ben cringes. 

She turns back to him and grins. “Your secret’s out.” 

He bites back a grimace, nodding at her glass of water. “What did I say? Drink.”

“Yes, _Alpha_ ,” she snaps back, and _oh_. 

_No._ The things that does to him, hearing her call him _that_ in that petulant, slightly breathy tone. Blood rushes through his veins, flaming his cheeks, hardening his dick; he feels almost lightheaded from the sudden burst of adrenaline and arousal. “Don’t say that if you don’t mean it,” he growls back at her.

She just raises a cheeky eyebrow and gulps down her water, her lips lingering on the edge of her glass.

God, she must be drunk if she’s trying to flirt with him. She must be wasted out of her mind, the way she’s running her tongue against her teeth and toying with the lime rind between her fingers. It’s her biology, obviously, her Omega nature taking the driver’s seat due to her brain’s rampant intoxication, and Ben can’t help the way he’s lured in by her charms. 

“Can I have another drink?” she asks. “A big girl one this time?”

“You can totally have another drink...of water.”

Her face falls. “That’s not fair though. I’ve been so good. I haven’t thrown up or anything.”

“Not yet. You look about a half a minute away from it though.”

“In your _expert_ opinion. I’ll have you know I can hold my liquor really well, for an Omega.”

“No comment.” 

He pulls away to make a cherry bourbon sour for a shorter, middle aged customer. His eyes keep flicking to Rey as he measures out the lemon juice, bourbon, and sour cherry syrup, shakes the drink, sieves it, then garnishes it with one of the preserved cherries from his mom’s tree. By the time he’s done, passing the drink to the customer with a flourish, Rey is face down on the bar, completely passed out.

“You gotta be kidding me,” he mumbles. She’s drawing some curious looks from customers and is starting to shift a bit precariously on the stool. Making up his mind, he hoists her up in his arms (very resolutely ignoring how soft and perfect and _right_ she feels), and heads towards a small, unoccupied booth in the corner. With a grunt, he gently lowers her onto the bench and gingerly arranges her limbs in what appears to be a comfortable position.

One of the customers raises an eyebrow. “She’s a friend,” Ben explains. “I’m giving her a ride home after I close up.”

As an afterthought, he grabs an old flannel shirt of his from behind the bar and uses it as a makeshift blanket, tucking her in like a little burrito. She hums in her sleep, snuggling deeper into the vinyl, then lets out a low, breathy coo: “ _Alpha…_ ”

“Rey, go to sleep,” he murmurs. “Go to sleep, and you’ll feel better when you wake up.”

The rest of the night is more of the same. Mostly regulars, interspersed with a few college kids on dates, and a random group of friends who set up shop in a corner booth with a stack of board games. The trickle in, then towards the end of the night they trickle out. Uncle Chewie closes up the kitchen a half hour early and ruffles Ben's hair, giving him a pointed look before wishing him goodnight. One by one, everyone leaves, until the only person left is the slim, still intoxicated Omega snoring quietly in the back. 

Ben hums to himself as he locks up. He dims the lights, takes quick stock of the inventory, starts a load of glassware in the sanitizer, and wipes up the tables before he finally walks back over to Rey. She looks so peaceful, snoozing and bundled up in his shirt, that he’s loath to wake her, and suddenly he’s struck by the weirdest feeling.

He’s given this woman so much power over him. So much time spent talking with her about power dynamics in relationships, and he’s still managed to be the one to fall head over heels for someone who will never want him. It’s so stupid and still so utterly typical for him.

She lets out a little snuffle in her sleep, and shifts slightly, burrowing her face into the vinyl booth cushion enough. The movement is enough to expose that little flushed patch of skin on her neck, her unmarred mating gland that’s just waiting to be penetrated by his teeth.

_Someone’s_ teeth. Maybe no one’s teeth. But definitely not his.

His eyes flick back onto her neck again, just for a second, and that’s when he feels it. _It_ , the slow rush of blood and hormones and razor sharp focus that can indicate only one thing:

_Rut_.

“Fuck,” he mumbles as he feels his cock start to swell in his pants. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

He keeps an emergency blocker behind the bar, just in case, though he’s never had to use one before. Not even before he was on the industrial stuff; he just never seemed to react to random Omegas with that crazy bloodlust he’s heard about and seen on TV, but now here he is, working on a Friday night and going into rut over a drunk, passed out Omega girl like a fucking pervert. 

_She’s not just any Omega though. She’s yours_ , his traitorous brain hisses, not that it helps the situation at all. What he needs is increased proximity and a cold shower, or at least a little time to retreat and let the blockers do their job. 

He barricades himself in his office, then pulls open his desk drawer, rifling through snacks and papers until his fingers close around their target. Colloquially known as “The Shot”, emergency blockers are unpleasant, to say the least. They’re basically a super dose of cortisol, and the result is a sudden onset of sickening, stomach turning panic that completely shuts down his sex drive. He’s asked his Alpha friends about it, and they all agree that it’s one of the most singularly unpleasant things to experience, especially when you’re on your own and determined to keep yourself away from a particular Omega. 

Knowing this, Ben pulls out his cell and calls his mom. Like him, she’s a night owl, so she picks up on the second ring even though it’s past 10 PM. “ _Ben?_ ”

“H-hey mom.”

Mother’s intuition is a force of nature, and she immediately picks up on his distress. “ _Ben, what’s going on? Is something wrong?”_

“It’s nothing, it’s just–” He swallows. “–I need to give myself the shot. And I didn’t want to be alone.”

_“Ah.”_ Thankfully is mother is also an Alpha, so his statement requires no other explanation. _“Are you somewhere safe?”_

“I’m in my office, yeah.”

_“And the Omega?”_

He swallows again, and wills his mind away from the little bundle currently wrapped in his shirt and snoozing in a booth, with only a door between them. “Y-yeah, she’s– she’s out in the bar. She’s alone, but I should be...I think I should be…” His throat catches. “–that’s one of the reasons I called, I guess.”

_“Stay there. Stay in your chair and don’t move.”_

God, he misses his mom. Was is hellish growing up in a household with a busy Alpha mom and mostly absent Beta father? Of course, but he’s also never met someone who has inspired as much confidence as his mother, and who has modeled all the ways an Alpha can be a force for good in the world. 

_“Now take the shot. Uncap it, and place it over your thigh. Don’t worry about your pants, you can leave them on.”_

He does as he’s told, his hands shaking with hormones and nervousness. 

_“I’m warning you. This is going to feel really strange and terrible, but I’m right here on the other end of the line. Remember: I changed your shitty diapers, so you have nothing to be ashamed of around me.”_

“I know mom. I know.” 

The shot is unnervingly cold the moment it enters his body. There’s a moment of calm, when he can feel his erection start to deflate and thinks _‘wow, maybe this isn’t so terrible after all._ ’

And then it starts. 

Suddenly, he can’t breathe. He can’t breathe and he needs to move, he needs to _run_ because they’re going to take her, they’re going to take his Omega and he’ll never see her again. He’ll never smell her soft floral skin or see her gorgeous hazel eyes or ever be able to touch her blushing pink glands and–

_“Ben. Stay with me.”_

Right. It’s the drugs, it’s all the drugs. None of it is real, even though he feels like he’s shaking so hard that bile is going to spill out of his stomach and his eyeballs are going to pop out of his head. “But they’re going to–”

_“No one is going to do anything. This is just the shot talking. You had to take it to keep the Omega safe, remember?”_

Because he wanted to fuck her so hard she’d beg to be his, but now the thought of even touching her is enough to send him into a deeper panic. “I would never have– I wouldn’t have done that thought. I–”

_“I know, but you were being safe. Just like I taught you.”_

It’s true that his mother wasn’t around much, but when she was at home, she was sure to instill in him the values of personal and social responsibility. _‘Alphas are born leaders, Ben,_ ’ she used to say. _‘So it’s our job to lead with humility and mindfulness for the needs of others.’_

_“Benny?”_

“Yeah?”

_“Tell me how you make those drinks of yours, that you serve at the bar.”_

He snort. “Mom, you were watching Dad mix drinks since before I was born.”

_“Humour me. What goes into an Old Fashioned again?”_

So he tells her. He explains how he measures spirits and peels citrus, froths egg whites and rims glasses with salt, and by the time he’s on to explaining the way he breaks down a pineapple for pina coladas he’s beginning to feel a lot better. It’s a good thing too, because he can smell freesias and jasmine wafting closer to his office, indicating that Rey is finally awake. 

“...Mom, I think she’s up. I can smell her.”

_“Are you feeling better dear? In control of things?”_

“Yeah, no I think it’s under control now.”

He can practically hear the way her forehead is wrinkling from concern. _“You think you’re under control, or you are under control? You have to be sure about this.”_

“Uh huh.”

_“Ben…”_

He groans. “Right, yeah I know mom. I promise I’ll be careful I–”

_“Okay, I love you dear. Keep me posted on any developments.”_

“Yup...love you too.”

He ends the call, pockets the phone, and then brushes his sweaty hair out of his face before he stands up and opens the door of his office. Rey is right behind it, looking even more disheveled than before, and his heart swells with the sight of her, especially the way she’s clinging to his shirt wrapped tight around her shoulders. 

“Hey.” He tries to keep his voice soft. “You feeling better?”

“I think so,” she answers. The whiff of alcohol on her scent and the quaver in her throat tells him that she’s not fully sober yet, but she seems a lot more lucid than before, at least. “I think I-I’m still a bit drunk. I had wine with my dinner and then some Fireball at home, and I don’t know if I ate much and–”

“Hey,” he repeats, reaching out a hand to pat her on the shoulder. She feels so _small_ in his palm and if it weren’t for the residual cortisol running through his system his inner Alpha would be roaring for the opportunity to take and claim. As it stands, he contents himself with giving her a light, hopefully reassuring, squeeze. “It’s going to be okay. May I drop you off at your place?”

“M’okay.” 

Quickly, he gathers his things and locks up his office. Rey watches from the end of the bar, her eyes still slightly glazed over, so Ben pours her a glass of water and asks her to drink it. It won’t do to have her pass out in his car, especially since he’s out of emergency blockers and not quite sure how he’ll react to the sight of her curled up next to him in the dim moonlight. 

“I’ve, uh, got this too,” he says, offering her a half mangled protein bar from his bag, which she refuses. He wants to push it a bit further--some food in her stomach with sober her up a lot quicker–but he’s also extremely self-conscious about being too Alpha-y, especially in this situation, where he holds a lot of power over her, so he tosses the bar back into his bag and leads her out to his car. 

“Try to stay awake,” he half-grumbles. “You’re denser than you look.”

“Ha, denser. Never heard that one before.”

She gives him an address that’s definitely on the more seedy side of town but, again, in an effort to appear non threatening, he chooses to not comment and instead turns the radio on to a classic country station, setting the volume low enough that it’s merely a steady hum in the background.

She looks good in the passenger side of his car. Too good, her slightly greasy hair pooled around her shoulders as she leans back on the headrest. She deserves so much more than a creepy bartender far too many years her senior oogling her as she’s half asleep in his car, but then again she also deserves more than a bunch of Betas ghosting her after saying they had a great time. She just...she deserves the world, not just because of a sad backstory or the way she smells, but because she tries so hard to see the best in things. The best in people.

Which is why when she turns to look at him, her eyes hooded with--with _something_ , and asks him to come up to her place, his resolve snaps into place like a steel trap. She’s still drunk, obviously. Still drunk and in that weird phase of intoxication where she feels all squishy and vulnerable and, _fuck_ , he would absolutely love to take her up on her offer, but he’s not that kind of monster. 

Watching her walk up to her apartment alone is one of the worst things he’s ever had to see. 

* * *

He doesn’t see her again until a few weeks later, and when he does–

Well.

He’s four drinks into a shitty night at a shitty club with his shitty friend Hux when he sees a flash of green out of the corner of his eye. It’s immediately followed by a waft of scent, _her_ scent, and before he knows it he’s leaving his glass on the table and walking towards her as Hux yells at him in the background. 

She smells even sweeter than he remembers, all sun warmed and alcohol tinged, shot through with the unmistakable musk of an incoming heat. In the dim light, he can just barely see the glands on her wrists and neck, which are dark and slightly inflamed. Something hot and possessive roars through his veins.

_She’s here to find someone for her heat. Here to lure them in. Take her, claim her now before someone else does._

Here’s the thing: he _hates_ dancing. Hates it with a burning passion; all that closeness, the proximity to strangers’ sweaty, stinky bodies, plus the fact that his big feet and tall stature make him kind of uncoordinated by nature. Thinking back on it, he hasn’t danced in...years, not since his parents’ ill fated vow renewal when he was 10 years old, back when his mom stuffed him into a powder blue suit and forced him into dancing for a crowd of her old work friends.

But this...sliding up against Rey’s lithe, sensual body, breathing in her scent and possibly tasting her on his tongue, it’s enough to push his lumbering body onto the dance floor to loom behind her, probably the most awkward way ever to introduce himself. And, turns out, she did want to spend time with him? Or something like that, which is enough for him to ask her to dance.

She melts like butter under his fingers, her scent rising lush and juicy in the humid room. He can’t help himself; his hands caress everywhere, her hips, her waist, even teasing the hem of her indecently short dress. He’s halfway to a public indecency charge by the time he can get her outside and pressed against his chest and _god_ , she tastes even better than she smells. 

And yeah, he’s into her. He’s into her in all the ways somebody can be into another person. He wants to be with her, be _in_ her, see her on her happy days and her sad days. He wants to scent her forever and listen to her laugh and watch her as she brushes her teeth at night and cuddle her every morning. And when she offers him a quick fuck, sure he’s tempted, especially since she smells so ripe and close to her heat and _fuck what if she lets me knot her?_ But deep in his heart, he knows that’s not enough. 

He wants all of her. One night could never be enough.

So he watches her go. Again. Just for a minute.

Because this time, he runs after her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final Chapter will be up on Thursday! Thank you everyone for coming along on this ride with me, and I hope you enjoy the rest


	4. Chapter 4

She’s very, _very_ fast.

Seriously, she’s halfway down the block outside of the club by the time he catches up to her. He’s in fairly good shape, but the combination of nerves and cold air and the four nasty drinks means he’s huffing and puffing by the time he reaches her. 

“Rey! REY, wait! Hold on!”

“WHY?” She whirls on him and, _fuck_ , she’s beautiful, her eyes alight like her very soul is on fire. “Why should I stop when it’s obvious you don’t want me?”

“What the fuck are you talking about? I literally said I wanted you less than two minutes ago.”

“You want a _relationship_ Ben. Not me! You want the idea of me, of the nice, sweet Omega girlfriend who will bend over and take your knot when you–”

“Shut up,” he grits out. “Don’t say it like that. You make it sound so cheap. I want so much more than just that.”

“Well you’re not getting it from me,” she spits, then turns on her heel and starts walking away.

Ben’s heart plummets. He can’t let her go, not like this. Not when she smells like everything he’s ever wanted, not when he can feel their future slip through his fingers, and definitely not now that big, fat raindrops are starting to fall from the sky, pelting them with a chilly deluge. 

“What is it that you’re looking for?” he calls after her. “Please, just tell me.”

“I don’t fucking know!” she yells back, drawing the attention of several passers-by. “I just...I don’t fucking know.”

She stops under the awning of a coffee shop, but keeps her back turned to him. Pausing behind her, he resists the urge to place a hand on her shoulder and just waits, letting the heat of his body infuse into hers.

“I can– I can be patient,” he vows. “Even though I’m not a patient man. I can wait for you to know what you need, and then I can be that for you.”

“H-how can you say that?” she whispers. “And how can I know you’re telling the truth?”

“Because lying is bullshit,” he blurts out. “And I care about you a lot. There’s no reason for me to lie to you or try to play games. If I like you this much, I’m going to tell you. Simple as that.”

They stand in silence for another moment, and then Rey turns. “Here’s the thing.” Her hair has fallen out and now hangs in sodden waves down her back. Makeup is running down her face, and her eyes are swollen, like she’s been crying.

Ben thinks she’s never looked more gorgeous.

“Here’s the thing: I can’t live my life that way. I can’t live my life in black and white, where people say what they mean and do what they say.”

Honestly, it sounds ideal to him. He shakes his head, confused. “Why is that?”

She takes in a deep, shuddering breath. “Because that means they never loved me. My parents...it means they–”

She lets out a half choked sob, and Ben just stands there like an idiot.

_Oh._

He wants to sweep her up into his arms, to press her quivering lips to his chest and kiss all of her sorrows away. Because that’s what he does as an Alpha, he _fixes_ things, he takes control and steers life in its most optimal (or at least advantageous) direction.

But this isn’t his story. And this isn’t his life, at least not yet, no matter how much he wants to steal her away and make her his, to tie the both of them together so tightly that it would be impossible to see where Ben ends and Rey begins. 

“I’ve been telling myself for...for years–” She lets out a sad little laugh. “–that they left me for my own good. Or they were too busy or their lives were very important, like they had an important job to do and they wanted to keep me safe. Maybe they were going to come back in five minutes but something ended up happening.”

“The proverbial Uber running over a phone,” he offers.

She gives him a watery smile. “Yeah. Because how sick and twisted would it be for them to have left their young child simply because they didn’t want her? How stark and terrible for that to be the only reason.”

He nods. 

“And I guess that’s why...that’s why I kept on telling myself that these dates of mine didn’t work out for–for other reasons. Because I’ve got to keep making excuses. I have to, because life is too bleak and terrible to live without them.”

“That’s so much responsibility for you though. To put the burden of making the best of a bad situation solely on yourself.” Ben doesn’t know if he’s making a lot of sense right now, what with the rain running rivulets down his shirt and pants and beading down his forehead. It’s fucking distracting. “Hey, there’s a park a block down, with some shelter. Can we–?”

“Mmmhm.” Her shoulders slump with relief. He’s about to lead the way when he feels something small and cold on his arm. It’s Rey’s fingers, wrapped tightly around his bicep like she’s terrified he’s going to take off without her. “Is this okay?” she wonders, in a voice just above a whisper. 

“More than okay.”

The park is tiny, pretty much an empty lot at the corner of an intersection that’s been seeded and landscaped with some overgrown bushes and trees. There’s a few benches covered in bird poop, plus a little ivory painted wooden gazebo situated in the back corner, which he leads them to with a gentle hand. The moment they step under the shelter, Ben breathes a sigh of relief as the persistent peltering of the rain finally stops. 

But then...but then he smells her.

God, she smells amazing. She _always_ smells amazing, but rain damp and breathless and _fuck_ so close to her heat, she smells like soft, tight, enveloping closeness, and he can barely stand it.

“Ben...are you okay?”

She squeezes his arm with her hand and he flinches, pulling himself away.

“S-sorry, it’s not you I swear, I just–” Balling his hands into fists, he takes a couple of open mouthed breaths that only serve to spread her scent over his tongue and buckle his knees. “You just...your scent is…it’s really good.”

There’s no use beating around the bush about it, and if there’s anything he’s learned about the past few weeks it’s that with Rey, honestly is always the best policy, even when his declaration causes her to shrink back from him. 

“I’m s-sorry,” he stammers. “I can leave, I promise.”

“No, it’s not that.” She turns away from him to run her fingers against the faded ivory railing surrounding their shelter. “I can’t– I can’t smell you back. And I’m not sure why. I guess...even though you told me you wanted me, I guess I assumed you didn’t like me like that because I can’t really smell you that much.”

All of the air rushes out of his body in a gust. “Don’t like you like that?”

“I can’t smell you like you smell me. At all. And at first I thought it was maybe your blockers, but I could smell you a bit in your car and on your shirt...that shirt that you loaned me, oh I have it by the way, I just need to wash it, I mean–”

“It is blockers,” he blurts out. Damn those blockers. “They’re actually doing their job for once. I’m on the really strong ones for work, the same kind that they give pilots and firefighters and surgeons. No one can smell me, not even my mom’s _dog_ can smell me. I don’t take then on days off though, which is why there’s some of my scent at home, and in my car.”

She turns back to look at him, fingers still lingering against the wood. “Oh.”

“I _do_ like you like that. So much. Like I said before, I like you so much I’d rather sit and listen to you talk about dating other men for ages than never get to see you again. I’d rather stuff myself full of blockers so that I don’t come on too strong for you. I– I respect you so damn much, even though I don’t agree with your dating practices at all.”

She rolls her eyes, and that little spark of sass from her goes straight to his dick. “Wow, I never would have noticed that.”

“I don’t know if it’s just instinct or something more, but I would do almost anything for you.”

“Would you kiss me?” she breathes. She pulls away from the railing and starts walking back to him, slowly, ever so slowly. “Would you kiss me even if you had garlic breath?”

“I would kiss you even if you had garlic breath, and I would like it,” he swears. “I would kiss you if all you’d had to eat for a week was garlic.”

“Wow.” She shrugs, a pretty pink blush blossoming across her cheeks. “That’s a big declaration of feelings there.”

“And I mean it. I meant what I said earlier too, about waiting. I-I feel like I’ve been waiting my entire life for you, Rey, and if being with you means I have to wait a bit longer, then I’m okay with that. All I need to know is that you trust me when I say I care about you, and I want to be with you.”

Biting her lip, she takes another step forward. “You know my heat is coming up, right?”

His nostrils flare. “Y-yeah.”

“If I spend it with you, once it’s all over...do you promise to call me back?”

“I’ll call you whenever you want. And if I ever screw up, you know where I work.”

Sultry bruised jasmine wafts under his nose. Rey’s eyes have gone hooded and sultry, her fingers tangling into the wet fabric of his shirt. He gulps. “In the spirit of full disclosure, I have to ask: are you into me?”

“Fuck you,” she laughs, and launches herself up onto her tip toes to meet his lips in a kiss.

* * *

It’s all a blur after that. Well, a blur in all of the safe ways that is; he’s (mostly) fully lucid as he drives them back to his place, despite Rey’s best efforts to crawl into his lap and start her heat in the parking garage next to the club. He keeps his eye on the road as his mind runs a mile a minute, cataloguing the amount of food he has, his blanket situation, reminding himself to text Uncle Luke once he gets home to close the bar.

“Just so you know, I’ve never done this before,” he admits when they’re still a few blocks away from his place.

“Hmm?” 

“I’ve never shared a heat before,” he clarifies. “Also haven’t really done much of anything with an Omega since high school. I– no one ever smelled right to me before...before you.”

She pauses midway through texting, her fingers hovering over the screen as she slowly looks over at him. “So _you_ only date Betas as well?”

“Not intentionally, but yeah.”

“Wow the hypocrisy,” she drawls, but her eyes are sparkling with something primal and possessive. “I’ve never shared my heat with an Alpha before.”

_That_ gets his dick even harder than it was before. Ben grits his teeth, willing his vehicle faster as thoughts of them together start flying through his head. “Well, I’ll try my best to make it special,” he vows. “Though I’ve been told sometimes that I can be a bit much...in bed.”

“Oh?” 

His heart skips a beat when he sees the way her eyes light up.

“You’ll have to clarify what that means when we get to your place, _Alpha_.”

He parks his car and practically drags her up to his condo. Once inside, he grabs her a dry towel from the linen closet, then gestures inside. “I’ve got a ton of blankets, if that’s what you need.”

She hums with appreciation. Kicking off her wet shoes, she pads over to the closet and runs her fingers over a particularly fluffy towel. “I use blankets and towels. It’s better to, uh, soak up the slick.”

“Okay.” He nods, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “Okay, cool, cool.”

“Do you have some...older sheets maybe? For your bed?” She ducks her head, suddenly shy. “I don’t want to ruin your 1000 thread count Egyptian cotton ones.”

“For your information, they’re only 600 thread count, and _we_ would be ruining them. It’s totally fine.”

“Okay.”

She tugs a few towels and blankets from the closet and places them in his arms. Taking the hint, he walks over to his bedroom and deposits them on his bed, then goes out to find her seated on his couch, her knees bouncing nervously. 

“Do you need some water?” he offers, thinking back to his designation ed classes in middle school. “Or some food?”

“Please...please don’t mate me.”

It’s such an explicit statement, so intimate to talk about even when they’re about to fuck that Ben does a double take. “S-sorry?”

Rey primly folds her hands in her lap. “It’s nothing personal, I swear.”

“No, I know that, I just–” He shakes his head. “I wouldn’t do that. Not without getting your consent first.”

“It’s just that, you said you’ve never shared a heat before. And I’ve never shared one with an Alpha, but the few times I’ve been with a Beta–”

He lets out a low, feral growing, surprising both of them. 

She raises her eyebrows. “ _As_ I was saying, my previous partners have told me that I, uh, often beg for it? To be mated? And because they’re Betas it doesn’t affect them, but I thought I would warn you first.”

“Okay.” His mind is still stuck on the image of her, writhing in front of some faceless Beta’s cock and his vision flashes red. He swallows. “Well, in the spirit of full disclosure, I should warn you that, uh, a knot can be...a lot. So you don’t have to take it, if you don’t want to.”

It physically pains him to say those words. As in, an actual cramp to his gut as his brain screams _WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?_ , but he has to be upfront with her, if this is her first time with an Alpha. “My...previous partners have all been Betas too, and only one wanted to try being knotted. It– it was very unpleasant for her.”

_Unpleasant_ is a bit of an understatement; she actually screamed so hard and so long that it only took him two minutes to dislodge his half deflated knot from her before she threw her alarm clock at his head and locked him out of her apartment. His only other time knotting with a partner had been when an Omega in high school had tried to blow him, and her jaw had dislocated around his dick, which had entailed the world’s most embarrassing emergency room visit. 

“I mean...you can do that?” She looks up at him, her eyes strangely soft. “You can just...not knot me?”

“I can pull out, right before.” _Fuck_ , he hates admitting this but again, honesty. “If the whole being locked together thing is too much for you, I can pull out a bit, right before I come.”

“Oh.” She bites her lip and taps her chin with her fingers as she mulls over his offer. “I mean...can I think about it?”

“I would rather you decide now, beforehand. Like you mentioned, you might say something during your heat that you don’t actually consent to.”

She shrugs. “But it’s not permanent, right? So if I ask for it while we’re...you know, then you can do it. And then ask me how it was after, when we’re more...with it.”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay, I can do that.”

He’s not sure what to do now, so he plops down next to her on his couch and clasps his hands on his lap. The fervor from earlier has died down into something quiet and more awkward. He wasn’t sure _exactly_ , what to expect; the heat porn he’s seen (because yes, he is human, and curious) had a lot more licking and biting and uncontrollable fucking up against a wall, so he’s not sure if he’s supposed to initiate something, or–?

“Sorry. I’m nervous.” Her voice is smaller than normal, and has a slight quaver. “Is it weird that I’m nervous?”

“What? No! No, not at all.”

She waves her hands in front of her. “I think I’m buying into this whole biological chemistry fate thing that’s perpetrated between Alphas and Omegas. Like this is all going to be something Earth shattering that will rock me so hard I can never go back.”

_God, I hope so._ “Well, how is it normally?”

“Okay? When I have a partner, that is. By myself it’s awful. Like when you have an itch on your back that you can’t scratch, only 5 million times worse. And even with a partner, there’s still a bit of frustration? Most people assume that having sex for three straight days is the most amazing thing ever, but by day two I’m usually waiting for it to be over. There’s only so many times you can come, hey?”

“I wouldn’t know.” Ben shifts uncomfortably. His erection is back, and with a vengeance. 

“No, I suppose not.” She gives him a sideways grin. “Guess you’re gonna find out though.”

“I guess so.” _Wow,_ he really didn’t think he could get any harder. Turns out he was wrong.

Then Rey tilts her head. Shifts, just a bit, next to him on the couch, shuffling over until their thighs are almost touching. “Ben,” she starts. “Did you take your blockers today?”

“Yeah, but I took them a bit early because I opened the bar early.” God, now his glands are itching now? What is he, seventeen? Discreetly, he rubs his wrist against his pant leg, and her eyes go wide.

“Okay. Because I’m starting to smell you.”

He looks up at her, _really_ looks at her, and swears his heart stops beating, because she’s looking at him like he’s everything she’s ever wanted and then some more, and her fingers are playing with the hem of her dress like his did earlier at the club and _fuck_ her eyes are trailing down to stare at his dick, and then– 

“Alpha, let me, let me please.” She licks her lips. “Let me make you feel good.”

The beast inside him _roars_ , and before he can make another coherent thought, he’s scooping her up into his arms, stalking over to his bedroom, and dumping her onto his bed without another word. She pushes herself up onto her hands and knees as he tears at his shirt buttons and pulls the offending garment off with one hand.

“Please, may I–” She reaches out her hand. “You smell so good.”

He tosses the shirt onto the floor, then tugs off his pants as well. “You don’t need those,” he promises. “Not when I’ll be right next to you.”

Whimpering, she shimmies out of her dress, leaving her in only a flimsy black lace bra and panty set. 

“Looks like someone was going out to get fucked tonight,” he comments with a raised eyebrow.

“Lucky you found me first,” she replies with a cheeky grin, and he fucking loses it. He pounces on her, caging her in between his arms and pressing down onto her hips with his own, rutting against her like a wild animal. 

“Remember what I said about my knot,” he cautions, running his lips against her jaw. “Just tell me if you–”

“I want it.” She’s panting into his ear now, hot and wet and breathy. “I want your knot Alpha, please.”

“Are you su–?”

“Ben, _please_.”

She peels off her underwear like an erotic birthday present, the scraps of lace falling to the ground as she bares her pert tits and perfect pussy to his hungry gaze. He doesn’t know what he’s ever done to deserve this feast before him, and he wants to eat her out so badly, but she’s also begging for his knot and _fuck_ , his animal side is winning this one.

“Are you ready for me?” he rumbles as she shoves his underwear down his legs. “Can you be a good girl and take me now, or do you need some–”

“Now, _now,_ please Alpha. Please Ben.” She wiggles herself further up his bed and presents herself, ripe and wet and gorgeous before him. “Please, you c-can do other stuff later, I just– please, may I have your knot?”

“Since you asked so nicely.” The first slide inside her is as smooth and all-enveloping as he imagined. “That’s right,” he murmurs. “That’s right, you can take it. You’re so good for me Rey, so open and wet and fucking _sweet_.”

She whimpers, and he can feel her muscles start to tense with the energy of upcoming release, so he takes in a deep breath, steels himself, and bottoms out within her. It’s _perfect_ , just as soft and hot and transcendent as he imagined, and it only takes a half dozen thrusts or so before he feels his knot starting to swell. “Rey, I’m–”

But all he can hear is a steady murmur of _‘please, please, please, Alpha, please’_ so he lets it all go, lets the pleasure overflow until it floods his head and he’s coming, releasing inside her perfect cunt in a series of mind altering spurts as his knot swells within her. It’s like plugging in the lights of a Christmas tree, that smooth, seamless connection that illuminates everything around him. Suddenly, he’s hyper aware of Rey beneath him, the way she’s panting through her pleasure, squeezing around him and milking another jolt of cum from his dick. He sees the sheen of sweat on her back, highlighting the planes of her muscles and back, and above all else, the flushed and swollen mating gland right there on her neck. 

_Fuck_. He wants to so, so much. He can smell it, can taste it on his tongue. But instead, he eases himself down around her, careful to avoid the gland with his nose and mouth, and pulls her tight against him, brushing kisses against the salty-sweet skin of her shoulder. 

“That was so fucking good,” he slurs into her skin. “So perfect.”

“Mmmmhmm,” she hums back. “You feel so perfect inside of me.”

“Yeah? It’s not...too much?”

“No!” There’s a brush of her hair against his face as she shakes her head. “It’s amazing, it’s like I finally feel...complete.” She pauses, and then: “I bet it’s going to feel even better when I’m in heat.”

Ben freezes. “Wait you’re...you’re not in heat yet?”

She laughs. “No, though I am close. Maybe a few hours away...but you’ll know when it starts.”

“I thought it already did.” 

Part of him feels stupid for exposing his ignorance to his Omega, but another part, a much larger part, is out of his mind estatic, because if this was so good, how much better could it get?

* * *

Turns out... _way_ better.

She shoos him from the bed once his knot has deflated, which takes a good half hour or so. It’s time spent relaxing, kissing her entire back and rubbing her sore muscles as she regales him with stories of her time as a young foster kid along with more recent memories of various cars that she’s seen during her mechanic work. Once he’s loose, she assigns him to food duty, so he’s stuck slicing fruit and cheese like a short order line cook while Rey scurries around his apartment, gathering towels and blankets like she’s preparing for an incoming tornado. 

By the time she’s done, her thighs have gone shiny with slick and Ben’s been slicing the same damn tomato for the past five minutes because _look at her_. She’s flushed and glowing and smiling, like she’s actually happy to be here with him, going through her heat. Once she’s done, she calls him with a coy _‘I’m ready now, Alpha’_ and he practically throws his knife across the kitchen in his haste to bury himself into her and her perfect little nest on his bed. 

And she’s right. It’s so fucking different, sliding into her when she’s heat slick and swollen. He almost comes instantly because it’s so good and he feels like he’s losing himself in her. She’s on her front again; she says she prefers it that way, and who is he to complain, so he’s treated again to a luscious view of her back and ass and that _fucking_ gland on her neck that’s screaming at him to pierce and bite and claim. 

But it gets worse, as his thrusts begin to speed up and she’s gripping the sheets, whimpering, and he’s almost bent over double with pleasure. It’s when she starts begging _‘Alpha please, take me, claim me, make me yours, bite me Alpha, I want it please, I’ll be so good for you, please make me yours forever.’_

He grits his teeth as a rush of hormones flood through his body, her words the final piece needed to push him over the precipice into rut. He fucks her harder, hoping the sensation will overwhelm her raspy voice, but it only gets worse. _‘Please Alpha,’_ she begs, _‘Don’t you want me? Please claim me, you’re all I’ve ever wanted.’_

_‘Bite me please. Make me yours.’_

_‘Please Ben.’_

He shudders with pleasure, bent over her so deep that his lips can brush up against her gland and, with a final thrust of his barely lucid mind, he reaches his right hand forward and eases two thick fingers into her mouth, pumping them like he pumped into her cunt, and she moans, clenching around him. Then it’s finally over, the exquisite torture dissolving into a burst of extasy as he empties into her, locking them together with his knot. 

“Thank you,” she groans into the bedspread, and together they dissolve into a puddle of pleasure until the next wave of heat starts anew.

* * *

It’s not as scary as she expected, sharing a heat with an Alpha in rut. 

She pictured more animalistic grunting, some manhandling and weird, non-consensual spanking, but for the most part Ben is the same during rut as he is out of it. Sure, he’s a lot more firm with her, positioning her just the way he likes her, and gripping her body a bit more firmly than he did before, but he’s also weirdly sweet, so encouraging and much more vocal.

_‘You’re doing so well Omega. So pretty and perfect.’_

_‘You’re taking me better than I ever imagined.’_

_‘Fuck, you’re so perfect. Do you know you’re so fucking perfect?’_

She would be lying if his words didn’t make her heart melt, even more than the regular scorching burn of heat, but the moment she really gets it, gets how amazing and perfect he is for her, is when she feels the salty, musky taste of his fingers in her mouth and knows that he’s honouring her wishes, no matter how difficult it is for him.

So she surrenders to everything. To the numb, mind melting throb of heat, where all of her is focused on the burn between her legs and the stretch of his cock pushing into her. She lets him have her every way possible: from the side, from behind, between her legs and in her mouth. She even lets him fuck her slow and steady, face to face, peppering kisses on her face as she keeps her eyes wide open and stares, because she’s never seen his expression directed at her before, and she has a sneaking suspicion it means a lot more than just lust. 

He’s holding her tight to him, one hand on her waist as the other toys with her ass when she’s able to push through the fog of her heat to ask him: “Ben. Ben, please bite me. Please.”

She can practically hear his teeth gritting behind her, and she knows it’s not fair but she can’t stop the way the words are dribbling out of her, faster than the slick pooling between her legs. “Please, please, I was so wrong, I want it _so much_ , it’s what I’ve always wanted, Ben please. Please, I know what I’m saying, I promise.”

Then he pushes even _deeper_ into her, and she feels the warmth of him bending over her back. “I know,” he whispers into her hair. “But I always keep _my_ promises.”

Then his hand slides to her neck and his thumb swirls a steady pressure over her gland and she loses herself underneath him, the promise of greater pleasure heady and sticky on her tongue. She feels his knot swell and the muffled _‘fuck’_ buried in her scalp, and wonders how she could ever go back to what she had before. 

Then she wonders why she ever needs to.

* * *

She wakes on the evening of the third day with a pleasant soreness in her limbs, and a lightness in her heart. It’s dark in the apartment, illuminated only by a beam of moonlight and streetlamps trickling through the window, and a persistent _flash flash_ of her phone notifications.

_Shit_. She had sent a couple hasty, sweaty fingered texts to her friends on the way to Ben’s place, but they probably weren’t coherent enough for them to fully grasp the situation. With a grunt, she hoists herself up enough that she can grab her phone from the nightstand, then quickly unlocks it and scrolls through her texts.

_Wtf you talking about?_

_Your heat??? Wiht bartender ben??? WTFF bb pls be careful, k? Call if you need us_

There’s a break of a couple hours then, sent on the same evening, a blurry picture of a hand, _Finn’s_ hand, wearing what appears to be a sparkling gold band.

_REY_

_REY I KNWO UR GETTING RAILED RN BUT_

_POE PROPOSED!!!_

“Oh my god!” she shrieks. 

“AUGH!” Ben bolts up from the other side of the bed, his hair completely rumbled and his eyes wide. He thrusts out his arm to catch himself as he almost tumbles out of the bed. “What-what’s wrong? What is it?”

She shoves the phone into his face and he squints at it, still bleary-eyed. “What am I looking at, is that...a cat?”

“It’s a hand, dummy! Poe proposed to Finn! My friends are getting married!”

“Oh!” He adopts a weird, half smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Yay.”

“It’s the couple I was telling you about, the one where the Omega didn’t want to be mated.”

_Now_ he gets it. “Oh!” he says again. “So the Omega finally got over himself–”

“Hey, it’s perfectly valid to–”

“–which seems to be a pattern with local Omegas lately,” he finishes with a smirk.

She smacks him over the head with one of his sinfully plush pillows, now slightly less plush due to the amount of...wetness it’s endured over the past few days. “You’re lucky you’re cute.”

“We both know that’s a lie.” He looks over at his stupid, mid-century modern alarm clock with its pretentious brass numerals. “Shit, it’s late. Do you want some pancakes?”

It’s a simple yes or no question, and that’s all he’s expecting in return. But for Rey, there’s something about it that turns her life on its head, that changes the way she sees this man, this Alpha, in front of her. He looks...like more, like a future of happiness that needs no other explanation. Did he give her three days of the most mind numbing sex ever? Yes. And is he offering to make her breakfast for supper afterwards? Also yes.

Honestly, what more could a person want?

“Do you want to go out with me?”

Ben pauses, halfway between pulling on a pair of pyjama pants, and slowly turns to look at her. “Sorry?”

“D-do you want to go out with me? Like, be my boyfriend, or whatever?”

“Or whatever?” he laughs. “I– yes? Of course I want to be your boyfriend.”

“Okay cool. Cool.” She avoids meeting his eyes, because it all seems a bit weird and surreal, and she’s worried that if she looks at him, he’ll somehow disappear. “And yeah, I’d love pancakes. Especially with bacon.”

“Can do.” 

Then, after sliding on his flannel pyjama pants, he pushes himself up off the bed, only to bend over and press his lips against hers. She melts into the toasty rich warmth of him, fingers scrabbling over his shoulders and into his slightly greasy hair, all mine, mine, _mine._

“I would have waited,” he breathes. “I would have waited for you.”

She smiles back at him. “You already did.”

The sight of his pyjama clad ass walking out the door to cook her bacon is the best thing Rey’s ever seen. Once he’s out of sight, she turns back to her phone, shooting off a quick congrats and update to Finn before going over her other messages. There’s a few from Rose, the first couple wondering how she’s doing while the most recent are about some guy from the club named Hux. 

_So it looks like happiness is catching_ , she muses. There’s the crackling sound of bacon and frying pancakes coming from the kitchen, and she’s surrounded by soft blankets and the rich, sweet-floral scent of _them_ , and for the first time in what feels like forever, she doesn’t have to pretend that her life is anything different, or better, than it is. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading this fic! If you enjoyed it, feel free to pop by my Twitter after the author reveals :)


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